I love to cook, but I've never been to school. Because it's apparently good enough, here's a little diary of some of my culinary adventures, none of which require difficult techniques or fancy equipment.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Leeks really are a beautiful vegetable: onion-like but mild and with an interesting shape and texture. They also play very well with potatoes, most often in a leek and potato soup, so I thought it would be interesting and tasty to try them fried with potatoes. Here's how it went!First thing first, I crushed and chopped up two cloves of garlic, then I cut up the white and light green part of a leek, one Nardello (sweet) pepper from the garden (picked by the "famous" JB, who came to visit us last week from Beijing! Hence the lack of posting for the week), and four potatoes, washed and peeled. Other than seasoning, that made the entire ingredient list.I put about two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in my large skillet and put it over medium-high heat next and added the potatoes. Since potatoes take a lot longer to cook through than any of the other ingredients, I let them fry like this for several minutes, getting soft and slowly browning, before adding anything else except a little salt and freshly ground black pepper. Occasionally I tossed them around in the pan to try to encourage some evenness in the cooking, but for the most part, I like to leave them alone so that at least one side gets a little toasty golden-brown.That's when I added the leeks, peppers, and garlic, which I tossed through, seasoned lightly, and let cook until everything was done.

After it was done (see the main picture above), I topped it with a little freshly grated Parmigiano reggiano and plated it just as the cheese melted a little. It was LOVELY.